[GOLD RUSH] Portrait of traveller and writer Friedrich Gerstäcker.

Albumen print photograph of a painted portrait, carte de visite format, 107 x 67 mm (mount), recto of mount with facsimile autograph of the famous writer, along with the artist's details: 'E. Hader pinxit', the publisher's copyright statement: '1882. Gesetzlich geschützt', and the imprint of the photographer and publisher: 'Photographie und Verlag v. Sophus Williams, Berlin W.'; verso with printed caption 'Friedrich Gerstäcker'; the albumen print and the mount are in fine condition. Both the fictional and non-fictional works of German traveller and writer Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872), which are based on his experiences in New South Wales and South Australia, are of great significance to the study of Australian society during the gold rush period. However, we can trace no portraits of Gerstäcker in Australian public collections. From ADB: 'Friedrich Gerstaecker (1816-1872), writer and traveller, was born on 10 May 1816 in Hamburg, son of Friedrich Gerstaecker (1790-1825), opera singer. At an early age he entered an office but later went on the land. In 1837 he migrated to America where he led 'a wild and adventurous life'. On his return to Germany in 1843 he established himself as a writer of travel books. Factual accounts of his own experiences and guides for intending migrants were followed by novels on American life that made him famous in Germany. In 1849 he went from South America to the goldfields of California and thence to Australia by way of the South Sea islands. He arrived in Sydney in March 1851, took a coach to Albury and attempted to paddle down the Murray River in a self-made canoe. When it was wrecked he tramped 700 miles (1127 km) to Adelaide, 'the wildest and most dangerous march' of his life. He visited the German settlements in South Australia but in August the first news of the gold strike hurried him back to Sydney and the Bathurst diggings. He next went to the Dutch East Indies but in 1852 was back in Germany as an author and journalist, living in turn in Leipzig, Gotha, Coburg, Dresden and Braunschweig. In 1860-61 he was in South America, observing the German colonists there. Next year he visited Egypt and Abyssinia, and a fourth voyage in 1867-68 took him to the United States, Mexico, Ecuador and the West Indies. In 1870 he was war correspondent for a popular journal. He died on 31 May 1872. Gerstaecker was a prolific writer; the first edition ofGesammelte Schriften(Jena, 1872-79) in forty-three volumes is incomplete. His novels and stories, based on experience and an extensive reading of travel books, are unsophisticated narratives of exciting adventures in far-away countries, but contain much ethnographical and geographical detail. The characterization is sketchy and the descriptions of exotic nature lack polish. The great success of his books in Germany was largely due to the sharp contrast they presented between the wide world and its freedom and the narrow parochialism of German life. The increasing flow of German migrants to Australia probably first aroused Gerstaecker's interest in the continent. In 1849 he compiled a handbook on Australia,Nord- und Süd-Australien. Ein Handbuch für Auswanderer, for intending German migrants. HisNarrative of a Journey Round the World ?(Stuttgart, 1853-54: English translation, London, 1853), vividly describes his adventures in Australia. His most popular Australian novels areDie beiden Sträflinge(1856; translated asThe Two Convicts, 1857), an adventurous story of a noble bushranger which was serialized in theExaminer and Melbourne Weekly Newsfrom October 1859 to March 1860, andIm Busch(1864), set in gold diggings near Sydney. Both deal with problems that he found specially interesting in the Australian scene: the complex relation between convicts, bushrangers, natives and free settlers, the fate of German migrants in Australia and the exciting life of the goldfields. Many of his other works such asBlau Wasser(1858),Inselwelt(1860) andUnter Palmen und Buchen(186.…